Grad students to put out monthly newspaper

Graduate student leaders will have their voices heard in a new forum when The Graduate Perspective newspaper appears in each graduate student's mailbox sometime in the next week. Printed in tabloid form, the first issue of Perspective will include articles on such topics as Clarence Thomas's nomination to the Supreme Court, health insurance, and Escort Service, as well as calendar and notices sections and student government pages. The monthly publication will be funded for the school year with $9000 from the Graduate and Professional Student Assembly, but GAPSA leaders and the members of the editorial board insist that the newspaper will be editorially independent. "They should be able to do and say what they want," said GAPSA Chairperson Michael Goldstein at last week's GAPSA meeting. "It's going to be as open and uncensored as we can make it," said GAPSA's Vice Chairperson for Communication Bernadette Barker-Plummer, the paper's editorial board coordinator -- the newspaper's version of an editor-in-chief. In the past, GAPSA and other groups such as the Graduate Student Associations Council produced monthly newsletters containing issues important to their organizations. The GAPSA newsletter, though, has been incorporated into Perspective, while GSAC will continue to print a newsletter. The newspaper aims to provide a "forum to reach a broad number of graduate students and get them involved," said GSAC President Anne Cubilie, another member of the editorial board. "We don't think of it as . . . competition to the DP," Barker-Plummer said. "We think of it as complementary." "[It focuses] on issues that are interesting and critical to graduate students that aren't as important to undergraduates," she added. "It's obviously different from the DP," added Cubilie. "It is not a newspaper on that level." The acting editorial board is made up of those who worked on this issue of the paper, but the group said that there are openings for any students who are interested in donating their time.

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